


Rebound

by hibye



Category: Scrambled: Syd City (Visual Novel)
Genre: Disability, Epilogue, Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, POV Syd, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hibye/pseuds/hibye
Summary: Syd adjusts to the small changes in life that occur after one falls off of a four-story building.
Relationships: Frequency/Scrambled, Syd/Alexa
Kudos: 2





	Rebound

I know it’s going to be very bad before the blow even lands. You get knocked around enough and you get a feel for it, unfortunately. I think, “this is going to be very bad,” when I see the way the bad guy winds up his shot, and I think it when he swings, and I think it when he nails me straight in the ribcage and I feel the ground tip out from under me – once, twice, three times, and then I’m over the edge and falling. I think it a final time on the way down; we were four stories up, on the rooftop of a bank building, so I have enough time.

When I meet pavement, I don’t think anything at all. Obviously.

\--

I live, though.

I wake up and it’s two days later, and I’m drugged out of my mind and all alone at the hospital. My left arm and leg are in casts, two ribs broken, and I’m concussed, but that’s the worst of it, all told; the doctors say I was lucky to land just right. I’ll be honest when I say that I don’t feel lucky.

They don’t let Alexa visit me at first. She’s not family, they say. That’s the worst part.

\--

At home, I have a little stool on wheels that I can use to scoot around the apartment. Alexa clears lanes in her clutter, stacking boxes and pinning wires to the walls, so that I can get around. It’s a quick conversation, our deciding that I will stay there while I heal up. So she can “watch me,” she says.

I still have my own apartment, but I’m almost never there anymore. Everything important is at Alexa’s place.

\--

She’s waiting for me to say something, which means that she wants to say something but doesn’t know how to get started. I don’t know what she wants to hear, and I’m tired. My left shoulder is throbbing. I readjust on the sofa, and even that motion pulls at something tender. I’m always hurting, a little.

“You overexerted yourself,” she tells me, finally, and brings me some more pills. I don’t even know which kind they are, but I’ll take them.

“Helpful,” I say. She’s right, though.

Part of me wants to treat physical therapy like a video game, but you can’t grind away at it. You have to do it in little pieces, slowly, carefully. It hurts the entire fucking time.

She doesn’t say anything else, but she brings me ice for my shoulder.

\--

When I feel up to it, I tug her closer to me at night. I know I’m lazy about it, can’t really move around much, but she works with me like she doesn’t even have to think about it. She’s gentle, and then when my ribs are healed, she holds me so tightly that I can barely breathe, hands between my shoulder blades, palms flat. Sometimes, especially when it’s good, I have to fight for it; she lets me cry and doesn’t say anything about it. Just kisses me and kisses me, until it’s all over.

I sleep easiest on my right side, with Alexa tucked up close behind, fingers resting low on my stomach to feel the deep rise and fall of my breathing.

\--

“I watched him wind up to hit you,” she tells me, “and I thought, ‘this is going to be bad.’”

We have little moments like that, of eerie synchronicity, more and more lately. The other day, we said two sentences in a row at the same time, without meaning to. It probably doesn’t mean anything.

“And then what did you think?” I ask, because she was there, and I can’t stand to think what I would do if I saw her topple off of a building. I’d lose my goddamn mind.

She’s sitting across from me in the kitchen, naked from the waist down and eating cold pizza from the fridge. Through a mouthful, she answers, “I couldn’t think. I couldn’t think about it.”

(She didn’t kill him, though. I didn’t have to ask. When she came to visit me in the hospital, she kissed my hand, once on each bruised knuckle, and said, “Don’t worry, he’s in prison.” She knows me very well.)

\--

In my dreams, sometimes, the fall kills me. I watch myself lying still on the concrete, blood pooling. Sometimes, in the dream, Alexa doesn’t care at all. Sometimes, I have to watch her for days after, foggy dream days where she holes up in her apartment in the dark, and I’m screaming at her to let the sun in, but she never hears me.

\--

Once I’m back on my feet, she doesn’t coddle me on our missions. She knows I’d hate that. Being Alexa, she’ll occasionally overcorrect and push me too hard, but I’d rather have that than anything else. The next time I’m knocked down in a scuffle, she barely misses a beat. She doesn’t waver. But that night, as I’m bandaging the scrapes on my elbows, she hovers just where she can keep me in her sight.

\--

I’m a little stiffer, a little slower, but otherwise in good form. Alexa’s workout routine rubs off on me, and it helps. We’ll sit together, rubbing our respective aching joints.

“We’re getting old together,” I tease, just the one time.

I can tell that this upsets her, but I’m not sure why.

\--

I like to look at her when she’s asleep, sprawled out open, her hair a little greasy, her shirt rucked up around her ribs. If she sleeps on her back, she snores – not loud, but audible. Most often, she’s tangled up in me, or we’re tangled up together, so I don’t get to just look. And there’s something nice about that, too, her octopus cling, like she’s afraid that I won’t just turn invisible, but completely disappear.

To be clear, she’s not beautiful when she sleeps. She looks ridiculous, almost feral. When I see her like that, there’s a phantom pain in my ribs, squeezing my insides, my heart and lungs.

\--

We’re walking back after a long night, and I don’t know if it was the chase or the fight that followed, or even just the cold, damp autumn air, but I can feel myself limping. Slowing down. Alexa doesn’t point it out, but I can feel her easing up for me and keeping pace. Every step feels wrong, sending little shockwaves up from the heel of my foot to the base of my spine.

It doesn’t happen all the time, not even very often. I stretch it out when I get home, and that helps a little.

In the bathroom, while I brush my teeth, Alexa stands behind me with her forehead resting on my shoulder. She’s warm and a little sweat-damp. She grasps my hips hard, until I say, “I’m right here.” I’ll call her “baby,” and she hates it. Secretly likes it. “I’m right here,” I’ll tell her. “I’m right here.”

\-- the end

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say for myself except that I loved this game and I'm sorry.


End file.
